Forcing connection to NFS storage to a specific vmkernel interface

[vadm168]

Hi,

vSphere 6.5

I have a pretty flat network where VM, management, and the NAS hosting NFS datastores are all on the same subnet. Currently I have in ESXi:

vmk0 --> management

vmk1 --> NFS storage

The reason I have two vmkernel interfaces is to separate backup traffic (which should go through the management interface) from the NFS storage. I only have 1g nics so separating them to reduce the chance backup traffic impacting storage traffic. However, I notice since they are on the same subnet and use the same TCP/IP Stack in Vmware, the TCP/IP Stack has route table:

Network     Prefix     Gateway     Device

10.60.0.0     17     0.0.0.0     vmk0

0.0.0.0     0     10.60.0.1     vmk0

Because the NFS storage backing the datastore is also on the same subnet, it will always use vmk0 instead of vmk1 for NFS storage traffic which is not what I want. Is there a way to work around this? Can I create two TCP/IP stacks for the same subnet? If so, how do I associate a vmkernel interface to a specific TCP/IP Stack?

Thanks,

[aleex42]

I think that isn't possibly.

All best practises will recommend a second subnet (and to be perfect a own VLAN) for NFS traffic.

[Nagaandar]

Hi,

Maybe you can try by adding a specific route for your NAS address to force GW on vmk1

esxcli network ip route ipv4 add -n IP_NAS/32 -g IP_vmk1

but this is not "best practices" .